


Third Genesis

by Alixtii



Series: The Fires of Love and Wrath [4]
Category: Arthurian Mythology, Christian Scripture & Lore, Original Work
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Christian Themes, Christianity, Court Sorcerer Merlin, Dark Character, Dark Fantasy, Domestic Violence, Dominance, Evil Merlin, F/M, Fortune Telling, Gen, Harems, Heavy Sadism, High Fantasy, Humiliation, Immortal Merlin, Implied pedophilia, M/M, Magic, Masochism, Nudity, Orphans, POV Male Character, POV Merlin, POV Third Person, Past Tense, Pederasty, Power Dynamics, Power Imbalance, Power Play, Pre-Roman Britain, Psychic Abilities, Public Claiming, Public Humiliation, Public Nudity, Rape, Sadism, Slavery, Soothsaying, Submission, Top Merlin, Uncle/Niece Incest, Underage Nudity, Underage Sex, Virgin Birth, Voyeurism, Wales, court intrigue
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-25
Updated: 2014-03-25
Packaged: 2018-01-16 23:56:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1366444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alixtii/pseuds/Alixtii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Myrddin, a fatherless boy with powerful latent gifts, is brought before the Vortigern, a series of adventures is set in motion which will rock not only the history of the world, but the very mists of Faerie itself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Third Genesis

**Author's Note:**

> I started working on the genesis of _The Fires of Love and Wrath_ in my sixth-grade year of elementary school, and wrote the following chapters in high school as a horny teenager. They contain rape (including non-consensual cross-generational incest), the enslavement and sexual exploitation of children, references to mass violence, and various generally problematic story elements. I think the overall story and quality of writing still hold up just fine (if you can overlook the problematic story elements), but there is stuff in here that definitely could be triggering to some people, so be warned. (OTOH, if you can make it through the first two chapters, you're probably good to go.)
> 
>  
> 
> If it's not obvious, the title "Third Genesis" is a reference to Merlin/Myrddin as the Third Adam.

 

> _"What is good?—Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man. What is evil?—Whatever springs from weakness. What is happiness?—The feeling that power increases—that resistance is overcome. Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency."_
> 
>  
> 
> –-Friedrich Nietzsche

* * *

The Vortigern studied the boy with interest—in fact, with more interest than he had looked at any other child, including those he had begat.

It was not that he was unfond of children; far from it. Rather, rarely did a child come to so prominently figure in his machinations. Children, like most of humankind, were mere objects to the Vortigern, and ones of little use at that.

But this boy, this boy was special.

Not that he looked it. Dressed in rags, he looked like exactly what he was: a poor street urchin. And yet, when one singled him out, when one had cause, as had the Vortigern, to examine him especially, one began to notice things.

His face, like his body, was youthful—the Vortigern guessed the boy to be no older than, say, thirteen, maybe fourteen years old. But into it was chiseled a peculiar resolve at which the Vortigern marveled. The boy had been betrayed by his own people, offered up to the Vortigern to die, and still he faced his death without flinching, if a little sullenly.

The Vortigern waited a few minutes, just watching the brown-haired lad. The boy made no movements, said nothing, prepared to wait until the Vortigern did as he wished.

At last, the Vortigern spoke. “Who is your father?”

The boy shrugged. More likely his mother had been a harlot than a virgin, the Vortigern mused.

“Is it true that you are the spawn of demons and not of man?”

The Vortigern watched the youth’s shoulders rise and fall in another defiant shrug.

“It’s a shame you’ll have to die.” He almost meant it; the boy intrigued him. So bold, while so silent. “You do know you have to die, don’t you?”

A nod. No fear.

“You know why?”

The boy shook his head no.

“It’s the tower, my boy,” the Vortigern said. “It won’t stand. My soothsayers say I should kill a fatherless boy—a lad, that is, such as yourself. Simple, isn’t it? Mix his blood—your blood—in with the mortar; I fancy it will turn it a nice mauve color.” The Vortigern watched the boy, interested in how he would take the information.

The child nodded to indicate to indicate he had heard the Vortigern. He just stood there for several moments, expressionless, ostensibly thinking. The Vortigern was considering the possibility the boy was mute when the child spoke.

“How, my lord, was this prophecy divined?”

After the large silence, the Vortigern almost started. He looked at the boy. “By tarot. Why should you care?”

“Do you have a tarot deck of your own?” The boy asked the question without fear, in a voice that bespoke confidence. Men doomed to die often lost their inhibitions—but in a child so young?

“As a matter of fact,” he told the boy, “I do, for my own enjoyment.” Wondering what the child was trying to do, the Vortigern gestured to one of the many half-dressed servant women he kept in his wake. “Esmerelda,” he told her, “fetch me my tarot deck.”

Soon, the slave gave the Vortigern the deck; he handed it to the boy. “Here.”

The boy nodded, shuffled the deck. He flipped over the top card; it was the two of cups. “A good fortune,” the boy said, “but a false one.” The Vortigern only stared at a child. What did he hope to accomplish by claiming the fortune was false?

And deeper: was it false? And what if it was? What then?

“How did the soothsayers interpret the tarot?” asked the boy.

The Vortigern remembered the farce: the three overweight soothsayers huddled around the deck, trying to agree on a prophecy. “That they should check the dice.”

The Vortigern expected disbelief or argument from the child; instead, the boy only nodded silently and took a few pebbles from a pouch on his waist. He knelt and threw them to the ground.

“What does it say?” the Vortigern asked. And always in the back of mind: what is he trying to do?

“Would you entrust your future to mere pebbles, my lord? They are but stones on the floor.”

The Vortigern smiled at the lad’s scathing response. Apparently, the boy’s temerity knew no bounds—and from a boy he had thought mute only moments before.

“They say nothing,” the boy said. “But the question is: how did the soothsayers read it?"

“That they should read the tarot.”

The boy accepted the ridiculous statement as if he had expected no other. “Although you were finally able to _persuade_ them to give you a substantial fortune, were you not, my lord?” He asked the question as if he had been there.

“Of course. That you—or one such as yourself—should be sacrificed.”

No doubt the child was thinking what had itself passed through the Vortigern’s mind: that the soothsayers, underestimating the ruthlessness of the Vortigern and his troops, had hoped that no such fatherless child would ever be found to test the prophecy. But if so, the boy did not show it. “Did they at least tell you what was beneath your tower that would not suffer it to stand?”

“No.”

The boy nodded, then paused. His eyes glazed over as he stared into nothingness. “I see dragons beneath your tower, in a pool, Vortigern. Each night they wake and fight. Your tower falls.”

* * *

Myrddin spent three days, by his reckoning, in the dungeons of the Vortigern, living in the damp darkness beneath the ground. He ate the stale, course bread when the guards deemed to feed him, drank perhaps a cup of stagnant water a day, and slept in the mud with the rats. A pile of excrement stood in the corner. His clothes wore worn and dirty; his skin was caked with dried mud.

When he heard the key in the lock of the door, however, he knew it was over. For an instance, Myrddin saw himself, feared and powerful. That was his future—he knew it.

The guard only gestured for Myrddin to follow, but Myrddin knew where they were going: to see the Vortigern. And, of course, he was right.

Myrddin watched as the Vortigern examined him. Myrddin’s abilities extended only so far; he wondered what the warlord was thinking.

“Do you know why you are here?” the Vortigern asked, but Myrddin heard, as if a whispering echo of the Vortigern’s words: _it is a test_.

“Of course, my lord,” Myrddin answered. “You have drained the pool, found the dragons.”

“Now, I am left with a question,” said the Vortigern. “How could a boy foretell their existence when my three best soothsayers could not?”

How indeed? Myrddin could not answer that question. But the soothsayers—He closed his eyes; saw them clearly in his mind’s eye.

“Your soothsayers, Vortigern, were frauds. All knew that; none will weep this afternoon at their execution. Your amazement lies not in their incompetence—which you knew from the beginning—but from the fact that anyone could perform the feat. There are more things in heaven and earth, my lord, than are dreamt in your philosophy.”

“And how did you know the soothsayers will be executed?”

Again, how indeed? Yet he knew. Myrddin smiled; he had impressed the Vortigern. “Come, Vortigern,” he said, gently chiding. “You have already given the order.”

The Vortigern nodded, thoughtfully. “Whom do you see as my next soothsayer?”

“Humility, my lord, forbids me to answer.”

“Humility?” asked the Vortigern, smiling. “Impudence disguised as modesty. Esmerelda, clean up the young lord.”

The servant woman walked over to Myrddin, knelt down to remove his soiled clothing: first his shirt, then his trousers, until he stood nude before her and the Vortigern. He suddenly felt exposed, defenseless, as he saw the Vortigern’s cold eyes examine his unclothed body. He fought down an impulse to squirm. I will be _powerful_ , Myrddin reminded himself, I will be _feared_. But all Myrddin could think of was the numbing air against his naked body and the Vortigern’s even colder, scrutinizing eyes.

Esmerelda returned with a rag and a bucket of soapy water, which she set down by Myrddin’s side. She began to wash Myrddin, delicately wiping away the dirt. The warm water felt soothing against the harsh chill of the air. Esmerelda’s rag washed Myrddin’s feet, worked its way up his legs, up his thigh. Myrddin could see the Vortigern, still watching with intent interest, as she began to scrub between his legs.

When Esmerelda finished, Vortigern nodded to her, satisfied, gesturing for her to leave. She exited at once. “Come here,” he said to the still-naked Myrddin. The boy, self-consciously, timidly, walked over to the Vortigern, stood before the warlord.

The Vortigern put his hand up, held Myrddin’s chin, staring into the boy’s brown eyes. “You intrigue me,” he said. “I don’t understand your abilities; I rather doubt you do yourself. But I can give you power, boy. I can make you feared.”

The Vortigern’s hand, gently, slid down Myrddin’s neck onto the boys chest. “I like you, boy,” the Vortigern said. He slid his hand across Myrddin’s chest, his side, his back, and down onto his buttocks. “And so I will let you live.”

* * *

Myrddin was given the title Chief Advisor and Soothsayer to the Vortigern, making him the second most powerful man in miles—while still a boy no older than fourteen. With his gift of futuresight, the ability to divine events yet to come, he guided the Vortigern into becoming a great power in Britain. And also, he learned what it was to have power himself. It seemed to him he liked it.

As a gesture of good will, the Vortigern sent his soldiers to hunt down Myrddin’s former people, those who had betrayed him so quickly and so cruelly. The soldiers slaughtered the men, including those elders who had decided to hand Myrddin over in a cowardly effort to placate the Vortigern. The women they took for slaves and mistresses.

The children, however, were given to Myrddin to do with as he wished. Myrddin had the soldiers strip the children of their clothing and line them up on the hill.

The boy stood on the rural hillside, flanked by the Vortigern’s soldiers, looking into the night at the rows of naked children, each one looking at him in frightened awe. Some were much younger than him; many were simply babies. These he had the soldiers leave in the valley near the burning village. If they were lucky, a shepherd or she-bear might find them there and raise them. Otherwise, they would die. Either way, Myrddin did not consider it his concern.

But the rest of the children _were_ his concern, he decided, and he relished in it. He marveled at the beauty of their naked bodies, marked by the first signs of pubescence. Taking a torch from one of the soldiers, he walked among them, reveling in his power over them. Although he was warm within his rich cloak, the night was chilly, and he could see them, robbed of their clothing, shivering in the cold.

Myrddin stopped in front of one girl, about thirteen years old. She was thin, probably malnutritioned, with scraggly blonde hair. He grabbed her chin, stared into her blue eyes. “What’s your name, slave?”

She didn’t meet his eyes. “Courtney, my lord.” Myrddin laughed at this girl, Courtney. She was so helpless before him. His hand slid down her body, across her neck onto her breast. He cupped it in his hand. He could fear her cringe under his touch, but she made no movement, showed no expression. Still, it seemed as if he could smell her fear—a sweet aroma which excited him with all his body.

This gift from the Vortigern thrilled him. He had already been given material things, like the cloak that he wore, but this was a gift of raw power. Over these children, he had power of life and death. They were his; he could do with them whatever he wanted, with no limits at all.

Myrddin pulled back his hand, and slapped Courtney, hard, so as to make her face sting. She stood there, too scared to cry or whimper. Myrddin felt all the more in control. The feeling was exhilarating.

Myrddin continued along the ranks, rejoicing in his power. He passed a dozen nameless faces, smiling as he watched their discomfort under his gaze. He stopped again, in front of a young boy on his left. The boy was younger than Myrddin, perhaps by two or three years. Myrrdin didn’t bother to ask the boy’s name, simply placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder and began to trace the contours of the boy’s body, his chest, his side, his hip, until Myrddin’s hand hovered between the boy’s legs. And then, quickly, Myrddin drew his hand into a fist.

Myrddin laughed as the boy screamed out into pain. _That_ was power.

He turned to a girl much older than him—perhaps seventeen, perhaps eighteen. She towered over him; his eye level naturally fell upon her buxom breasts. He felt her breasts, then followed the contours of her front down to the hair between her legs. Like the others, she didn’t protest, she didn’t move, she simply waited for him to move on.

He did so. As he did so, he saw in the crowd faces which were not merely soulless objects, slaves, to him. He caught a face or three which he recognized: boys who would harass him, the shepherd’s daughter. He said nothing, but held their gaze, letting them know he recognized them.

* * *

He had the slaves installed in his household. With these children, the Vortigern alone had more slaves than Myrddin. They would feed him, bathe him, clothe him, amuse him, and answer to his every whim. He would use them and abuse them as he desired. And they put up no resistance.

Myrddin never forgot the night on the hill, when his slaves stood lined in rows, naked before him, their master. He held their lives in his hands, capable of crushing them with a mere word if he so desired. And he would do so, when he desired. He used them, abused them, slept with them. And whatever he did, they took it silently.

For neither did they forget. How could they forget the night that they stood, cold and fearful, naked on the hill, in awe of their young master, their parents freshly slaughtered before their eyes? They revered him with the strongest terror and awe possible. Myrddin knew all of this, knew it and loved it: it was a feeling of control, of power.

He felt it in the city, too, that same reverent fear and dread, from the townspeople. He would stroll through the villages of the Vortigern, and everywhere it was the same. He was the Chief Advisor and Soothsayer to the Vortigern, his power second only to the Vortigern himself. The Vortigern’s subjects heard of his great gift of futuresight, and they said to each other, it is good that the Vortigern has a true soothsayer rather than the fools he kept before. Still it set him apart from them, this mystical ability of his, and it only increased their fear of him. Always, they would wander what this boy saw with his magic vision.

And everywhere, even for miles beyond the Vortigern’s lands, he was known for his love of power, his unending appetite for control, his sadistic fury. But never would they deny him anything, for fear of reprisal. They knew he had a childish temper still, and what the fate would be if the boy’s anger was aroused and turned against them. He was second only to the Vortigern; his word was law.

Myrddin, of course, would not have had it any other way. The fear of those he interacted with, their quick acquiescence, all indulged his tireless thirst for power.

And so he would go out into villages, and play with the villagers if it caught his fancy, use and abuse them in his own private schemes, torturing them as he liked. They were not so broken as the slaves in his household; still, they obeyed with quiet obedience. All of this, of course, served only to increase their fear of a boy who was not yet fifteen years old.

On this particular day it did not catch his fancy to torment the villagers thus, and so he didn’t. Nonetheless, he kept an eye out. He watched little boys play half-naked in the alleys, pubescent maidens fill their buckets at the will; saw the men going about their own business, and the women tending to their own matters.  
Suddenly, however, he heard a shout.

_Not an actual shout, but a mere shadow of one: a passing premonition. It is followed by pain: he can feel, in his mind, a slap across the face. He sees blood. Fabric ripping. A young girl struggles in the hands of a much older man, beating her, tearing of her clothing, raping her—_

_Myrddin turns his head, unable to wish away the horrible image his futuresight shows him. The scene changes, as suddenly as it has come. Once again, the girl is engaged in intercourse, but willingly, uninjured, on silken sheets. Myrddin sees that he himself lies next to her._

He broke into a run. Faster, faster, he willed himself, until he reached near superhuman speed. He had no idea of where he was running to, but that was no matter; his legs knew. At last, he found his way to a dilapidated shanty, which he entered.

To his relief, he came in time. The girl was bleeding, yes, her scarlet dress ripped and tattered, but the majority of the beating he had foreseen had not yet taken place.

“Stop,” Myrddin said, his voice firm, with authority. The man, startled, did so, dropping the girl to the floor. He looked at Myrddin indignantly.

“Who are you, boy?” the man asked. “And what right have you to tell me how to treat my niece?” He stepped forward menacingly.

Myrddin refused to back up, despite the man’s greater strength. “I am Myrddin,” he said, “Chief Advisor and Soothsayer to the Vortigern. I command in the Vortigern’s name. Leave.”

The drunken man did so, slowly and reluctantly, responding more to the authority in Myrddin’s voice than to his words. Myrddin was left alone with the battered girl, and leant over to help her to her feet.

As he did so, he wondered: why had he went through all his trouble, to help one lowly girl? He had seen girls raped in the streets of several villages; each time, he had watched and laughed. In his own manor, he slept with his slaves with no concern as to their wishes.

Yet when that vision came to him, it pushed all other thoughts out of Myrddin’s mind. All he could think of was the awful sight of a man raping his niece, and he had rushed to the girl’s side. Why?

“Are you all right?” he asked the girl.

“I’m fine, thank you.” Her eyes were brown, the same hue as his own; her hair blazed as red as her dress. The vision of her and him lying together in bed, making love, flashed through his mind, this time not a vision but a wish. This would be his woman.

“Your name?” he asked her.

“Blythe, my lord.”

She must have seen his desire in his eyes. Myrddin could keep his face impassive, but always his eyes were intense and passionate, though few could read the secrets hidden there. “You hunger for me as my uncle did?” she asked, with no hint of fear or recrimination in her voice. With her uncle gone, she had regained her composure and stood self-possessed before him. It was simply a question.

Her flesh seemed to him so soft, her figure so lascivious, her breasts so full, and her body so tempting, that he had not even decided to answer when the word came across his lips. “Yes,” he whispered.

“You command in the name of the Vortigern,” Blythe reminded him. “I am but your humble servant.”

Why was she so willing, Myrddin wondered? Had she been raped and abused by her uncle so often she was no longer able to resist? Myrddin only had to look at her to know that was not the case. She was not like one of his slaves, fearful and awe-filled. Instead, she wore a mischievous grin.

She had fought and struggled against her uncle, but she seemed to accept his lust welcomingly. Was it that he had saved her and she was grateful to him? That did not ring true, either.

Her eyes looked to him with trust and kindness, and Myrddin, knowing that he was welcome in her flesh, removed the torn scarlet gown, gently, softly, from Blythe’s body, letting the gown slip down over her shoulders, her breasts, further and further down. His heart began to beat harder. He had slept with scores of women, most with beauty rivaling Blythe’s. But Blythe’s brown eyes looked back at him with something the others had all missed, an echo of the same passion he felt. Always before, making love had been an impersonal thing, something that was done to one of his slaves as if she were no more than a thing, an object. The pleasure that came with it was no more than a small physical gratification; the real pleasure came from the naked flesh in his hands, the sense of control and power. With Blythe, there, then, it was different. He did not want to control her, to force her against her will; that was for her drunken uncle.

He had not known it could be like this. Myrddin felt Blythe’s body pressed against his, in the same heat, the same throws of raging passion. The two souls, there, together, its seemed to Myrddin for a second as if they were melding together, their bodies, their minds, their souls, into one passion and one will.

_That moment stretches into an eternity, and then, in a single instant, it is over._


End file.
